At 10:26 -0600 on 9/4/01, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
> I realize that you don't appreciate the benefits. You're so out of touch
> with the users that you don't even realize there's a problem here. But
> that doesn't answer the question. What's the _harm_ in using /package?
>
> Apparently OpenBSD has some sort of rule that prohibits the use of
> /package. _Why_ does OpenBSD have this rule? Do you think the world is
> going to end if a file is called /package/math/nistp224/src/PUBLIC.base
> instead of /usr/local/whatever/nistp224/PUBLIC.base?

I can tell you haven't run large installations.

At my day job, yes, the world would end, or near enough that it wouldn't
make any difference to the sacked sysadmin staff. Our production systems
have filesystem specs for good reasons.

Those specs aren't changed lightly. Aside from the hassle of getting
thousands of users retrained (including getting their poorly written
15-year-old hard-wired scripts fixed) plus maintaining a horde of spaghetti
symlinks (that -will- have bugs), there's the hassle of repartitioning
hundreds of machines. But we've got real work to do, so that kind of
make-work just isn't going to happen. We're not going to break what works
to go with the latest fad.

Sorry, but add-ons go where we say, not /opt or your new-fangled
clone-of-opt. Moreover, if we were going to standardize on something
different from our production spec, well /usr/local already exists, and is
only a single element change in the path from our legacy setup. We'd thus
almost certainly go there rather than /package.

> A few people are screaming about new entries in the root directory. Were
> they also screaming about the introduction of /var, and /a, and /crypt,
> and /emul, and /devices, and /tftpboot, and /proc, and /root, and
> /COPYRIGHT? Even if they were, why should the rest of us care?

Root is mounted read-only, /var is a separate filesystem (upon which
/var/crypt lives), /emul is a symlink to /usr/local/emul to handle legacy
breakage that hasn't yet been converted over, etc.

Sorry for the serious answer to your specious argumentation, but your cheap
belittling of people who don't put extra junk in their normally rather
small root partition was quite uncalled for.

Hey, why don't you make it easy to point $DJB_PACKAGE_DIR at any node in
the filesystem we needed to use as $LOCALBASE. Now -that- would make your
package ideas useful.

You could co-exist with existing real-world systems, rather than
promulgating yet another exclusively incompatible filesystem layout
standard. Such coexistence would make your stuff part of the solution
rather than part of the problem.

Presently, OpenBSD's system is part of the solution, and getting better at
it with every fix. You haven't yet offered anything better.

How about it. Can you meet real-world needs?

Richard

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]